Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an imprinting method and an imprinting apparatus that form a resin pattern from an uncured resin material applied to a substrate, a sample shot extraction method, and an article manufacturing method using the same.
Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, an imprinting technology in which a liquid uncured resin material is applied for each of a plurality of shots arranged on a substrate, and then the applied uncured resin material is formed into an application pattern by embossing to thereby form a resin pattern by curing has been known.
The imprinting technology is a technology that is capable of forming a resin pattern consisting of a nano-scale fine pattern, and is being practically implemented as one of the nano-lithography technologies for facilitating the mass production of magnetic storage media and semiconductor devices. Also, in the imprinting technology, a mold is employed on which a mold pattern (mold or template) that corresponds to the negative/positive inverted image of a resin pattern to be finally transferred to a substrate is formed using an electron beam lithography system or the like. A resin pattern is formed by applying an uncured resin material to a substrate such as a silicon substrate (wafer), glass plate, or the like, and curing the uncured resin material in a state in which the mold pattern is pressed against the uncured resin material so as to form an application pattern. At this time, the shape of a resin pattern to be formed on a substrate may differ depending on the type of device to be produced. Thus, the application distribution of an uncured resin material to be applied to a substrate also needs to be generated in accordance with the resin pattern. Accordingly, in general, the capacity and the application distribution of an uncured resin material to be applied to a substrate need to be calculated based on the volume of a resin pattern (for example, see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2008-502157).
On the other hand, an uncured resin material applied to a substrate is exposed to the surrounding environment, such as air flow, in the liquid state until the uncured resin material is cured. Consequently, the state change, such as volatilization of an uncured resin material, may readily occur due to the influence of surrounding environment. Thus, in order to suppress the adverse effect of the state change, the degree of change due to surrounding environment needs to be predicted in advance. For example, when the height of the resin pattern formed on a substrate is measured and variations in height exist, a method for adjusting the application distribution of an uncured resin material in advance so as to suppress such variations has been proposed (for example, see U.S. Patent Publication No. 2007/0228593).
However, in the method for adjusting the application distribution of an uncured resin material as described above, only the height of a resin pattern and surrounding environment, such as air flow, are taken into consideration, and thus, the adjustment conditions are insufficient, whereby a sufficient adjustment result may not be obtained. Also, since the state change of a resin pattern varies from around the center of a substrate to around the periphery thereof for each shot, a uniform shot cannot be formed by the adjustment result in which the height of a resin pattern and surrounding environment, such as air flow, are simply taken into consideration. Furthermore, the adjustment for each substrate to be processed, in particular, for each shot is extremely difficult. Once the adjustment is made for the application distribution, such application distribution may be executed for the next substrate under the same condition. Therefore, the resin pattern accuracy of the entire substrate varies and remains low.
Accordingly, the present invention provides an imprinting method and an imprinting apparatus that are capable of strictly interpolating the application distribution of an uncured resin material for each shot, as well as reinterpolating the application distribution efficiently while reducing the workload of a user.